Published in The Prague Post, c. 1999. Text from the author's final draft; the printed version may differ slightly.
Why bother?
If you've decided to take the plunge and learn Czech, chances are that you will want to type a letter to your Czech friends, type up a list of words, or perhaps even keep a diary. True, all these things can still be done with ink and paper, but so they can be chiseled into stone. If you find it difficult to interact with chewed up flattened wood, you may appreciate this guide to setting up the computer to be friends with Czech. All operating systems have their Czech versions, too, which can be quite educational but also time consuming for beginner. Czech fonts and keyboard are then obviously set as the default. In that case, you can use the procedures described below to make using English more natural.
Fonts?
The bone of contention, are obviously all those Czech letters with accents. There are 14 of them (plus 14 more if you count, as the computer does, the capital letter separately). Unfortunately, the original designers of the computing machines (Americans) not only failed to foresee the coming of the year 2000, they were also kept in the dark about the fact that there are more foreign languages than Spanish and French. Thus an entirely new industry sprung up to deal with the mess. Fortunately, along with the unstoppable globalization, the situation has changed dramatically (mostly for the better). The news is particularly good if your computer runs Windows 9x/NT. In that case, all you have to do is change the keyboard (described below) and most common text editors will automatically be able to write Czech correctly. Things are a little more complicated for Macintosh lovers and the lost souls plodding into the new millennium with Windows 3.1. In that case, you have to install additional fonts. They are available for free on the Internet, either through Apple or Microsoft, or at third party sites, such as http://www.muselik.com/czech/fonts. If money is no object you can buy a whole third-party language package from a software vendor, although it may be a little difficult to find in this day and age.
Keyboard
If you're wondering where all these characters fit on the keyboard and whether you'll have to go through a Ctrl-Alt-876 rigmarole every time you want to type ř, the trick is relatively simply. If you only need to insert a Czech character once in a while (such as in an address) you can use the Character Map (a utility provided with the operating system), or the Insert/Symbol function in MS Word.
For serious typers, however, this is not a viable solution. They have to change the keyboard layout. This is a little tricky with Windows 3.1 and the Mac but Windows NT/9x handle this very easily. Click on the Start button and select Settings and Control Panel. Then open the Keyboard panel. Click on the Language tab at the top and then the Add button. Choose Czech and click OK. You may be asked for the install CD-ROM, so have that ready.
After you have added the layout, you can jump between the two layouts by typing Alt-Shift, or clicking an icon which will have appeared in the bottom-right corner. Make sure you check 'Enable indicator on taskbar' in the Keyboard control panel.
The layout of the Czech keyboard is very simple. Most of the accented letters are placed in the place of numbers and numbers are then typed through Shift. Ú replaces '[' and ů does away with ';'. Other diacritics are all displaced though. Experiment with the keyboard layout to find what is where. Letter such as $ or @ have to be entered through Ctrl-Alt or you can switch the layouts. Accented capital letter are fairly rare and that's why they are entered through an intermediate key. For example, to get 'Ř', type '+' while the Czech keyboard is on and then 'R', etc. For letters with '´', type '='. The same goes for small ň, ď, ť which are also very rare.
To remember which key is which, it is possible to buy transparent stickers to put on individual keys, or you can invest into a felt tip pen. Computers bought in the Czech Republic will automatically come with a keyboard with dual markings.
Now, the Czech keyboard layout has one annoying detail: Z and Y are switched. To fix that go back to the keyboard panel and select the Czech keyboard, click on the Properties button and choose Czech (QWERTY). This will set up the Czech keyboard layout except for the Y/Z swap.
For Mac and Win 3.1, you have to rely on the Internet again. You can find a free program which lets you design your own layout on http://www.sil.org. If you buy an independent package, a keyboard layout program will come with it.
Spelling Checker
To check spelling of your documents you have to have the spelling checker for Czech. You can buy a Proofing Package for all major text editors for around $50. So far, there is no effective Grammar Checker for Czech due to the complex system of endings and fluid syntax. Thesauri are not readily available for Czech even in print so if one comes with your spelling checker, it might be quite limited.
Online
Even if you don't want to write anything in Czech, there are so many Czech sites on the Internet, you may find yourself wishing your browser would display all the accented letters correctly. So if you wish to read Czech papers (and all the major ones and many minor are fully online), this might come useful. First, upgrade to Netscape 4 or above or Internet Explorer 4 or 5 (both are free). That might actually be enough, because some pages may display automatically with the right letters. If they don't, select Encoding (or Character Set in Netscape) in the View menu and choose Central European (Windows) or (ISO). This should fix the problem. Additionally, many Czech sites have a section called 'Kódování' which lets you choose further options. Mostly, you will not need that. This section will come in handy if you decide to cling to your old browser (or if your old computer can't cope with it).